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Stars on screen

FIFA.com has certainly been busy during the
Preliminary Draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™. As well
as providing comprehensive coverage from the International
Convention Centre in Durban, which included live commentary of the
Draw, the team's editorial network also tracked down the likes
of Marco van Basten, Kasey Keller and George Weah for a series of
exclusive interviews.

Weah, one of the assistants for the Draw, spoke candidly to the
world's football website about how he would like to be
remembered, the impact of his team-mates as well as his favourite
goal. "I don't need to think too hard about that
one," he smiled. "It would be a goal that I scored for AC
Milan against Verona at the San Siro in 1996 (from a Verona corner,
Weah won the ball in the Milan penalty area before advancing the
entire length of the pitch and scoring). That goal had everything:
technique, speed and precision; and every single one of my
manoeuvres in the build-up was deliberate."

US goalkeeper Keller was more focused on the Draw and who he
viewed as his team's toughest opponents. "We've had
the edge on Mexico of late and I'd have to say that going on
recent form we're the ones to beat. But home advantage counts
for a lot in our region, though. They win at their place and we win
at ours."

Coaches in reflective moodWhen the Draw was made, Keller's coach Bradley was fairly
philosophical, pointing to a transitional time for his team and the
ever-improving teams in the CONCACAF region. "It's fair to
say that teams in CONCACAF are getting better across the
board," he said. "If we end up meeting Guatemala,
Trinidad and Tobago and Cuba we could be in for a very hard test.
They are teams that we know well, and we know they are very
talented opponents. 2007 has been a lot about bringing in new
players to the US national team and I think that we are doing a
good job of encouraging the newer guys to step up and try to fill
the gaps left by the retirement of Brian McBride, Eddie Pope and
Claudio Reyna."

Swedish coach Lars Lagerback was left to reflect on a tough
draw, which pitted his team with Portugal, Denmark, Hungary,
Albania and Malta. "I've not really analysed the other
draws but I am quite sure that ours is one of the toughest,"
he commented. "We obviously know Denmark extremely well,
they're our neighbours, and it will be tough to face them
again, as it has been in the EUROs. And then you have Portugal, who
have some quite superb young players coming through. It's a
very tough group but Sweden has a good record of qualifying for
World Cups in recent and hopefully we can make sure that
continues."

Meanwhile, former striking legend Marco van Basten, now coach of
the Netherlands, told
FIFA.com that meeting Scotland, Norway, Macedonia
and Iceland would represent a different challenge for his troops.
"It's not easy, that's for sure," he said.
"In the last qualifying groups we've had, it's been
against teams in the south-east of Europe. Now we're facing
teams in the north-west and that brings something different in
terms of our opponents' way of playing. We have to prove we can
beat them too even though they are really good teams. Scotland are
very dangerous at the moment, especially over the last two years,
and we have to be very careful playing against them. But it was a
nice experience in Germany last year and we hope very much that it
will be possible for us to be here in South Africa in
2010."

Watch these videos in full - and many more - by clicking on
the links on the right hand side.